95
News and Notes
The brief piece on the Sandburg Medal, and the awarding of that
medal to Glen Brolander, in the January 2014 issue of this quarterly may
have left some readers wondering. First, the first person “I” who appears
in the second paragraph is longtime Society member and leader Eric
Lund. Second, the award was given to Glen Brolander at a celebratory
dinner gathering that included the Brolander family and friends, as well
as Society officers, at the Boutwells Landing Senior Living Center in
Oak Park Heights, Minnesota, on 15 September 2013.
Adding to their publication of new editions of Vilhelm Moberg’s
emigration novels, the Minnesota Historical Society Press has just
published two more books by the Swedish author: The Brides of Midsum-mer,
translated by Gudrun Brunot (St. Paul, MN: MHS Press, 2014;
ISBN 978-0-87351-920-5), available in paperbound and e-book editions;
originally published as Brudarnas källa: En legend om de bofasta in 1946
by Albert Bonniers (Stockholm). When I Was a Child: An Autobiographical
Novel, translated and abridged by Gustaf Lannestock (St. Paul, MN:
MHS Press, 2014; ISBN 978-0-87351-925-0), available in paperbound
and e-book editions; originally published as Soldat med brutet gevär by
Albert Bonniers (Stockholm) in 1944. Lannestock’s abridgement and
translation was first published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1956.
96
Book Reviews
Adler, William M.1 The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy
of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2011.
Paper, 435 pp. Footnotes, bibliography, index, illustrations. ISBN
9781608194605.
The Swedish immigrant Joe Hill has occupied a prominent place in
Swedish-American lore since the state of Utah executed him in 1915,
allegedly for a double murder. He always maintained his innocence, and
this new full-length biography of Joe Hill by William Adler presents
convincing new evidence of that innocence. In fact, Hill seems to have
been prosecuted primarily because he was a high-profile songwriter and
leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or “Wobblies,”
an early twentieth-century radical labor union movement.2
Joe Hill was born as Joel Hägglund in 1879 in Gävle, Sweden, into
a musical family. His father died when Joel was only eight, however,
leaving the family in financial straits. The Hägglund family church,
Bethlehem Chapel, was an important center of Sweden’s religious revival
and free church movement. Its pastor, Rev. Paul Peter Waldenström,
was a powerful preacher and theologian at the height of his influence
during Joel Hägglund’s boyhood. Among other things, Waldenström
preached Christ’s mission to seek social justice and to “release the
oppressed,” a message that the adult Joe Hill seemed to follow.
After his mother died in 1902, Joel and an older brother emigrated
to America. In America he changed and shortened his name from Joel
Hägglund to Joe Hillström to Joe Hill.
Adler’s new biography delves into the history of the IWW, the
challenges faced by unskilled labor (much of it from immigrants,
including many Swedes), especially in the western United States, and
the differences between the Wobblies and the much more conservative,
Samuel Gompers-led American Federation of Labor. The business,
political, and media establishment despised the IWW for its use of strikes
and work stoppages, its socialistic rhetoric about workers taking over the
capitalistic system, and its basic challenges to unfettered big business.
Cities in the West passed ordinances to try to prevent the Wobblies
from organizing workers and exercising free speech. This resulted in
97
IWW-led “free speech” campaigns in places like Spokane and Fresno,
where Wobblies would converge on the city, get arrested for exercising
free speech on street corners, and overwhelm the city’s jail and court
systems until the cities cried “uncle.” Joe Hill participated in the
successful free speech campaigns in these two cities.
Where Joe Hill found his true calling, however, was in writing songs
for the movement. He wrote dozens of songs—in English, usually to
well-known tunes, often humorous, sometimes caustic, and in parody—
that struck at the oppressors of the working class and gave hope to the
Wobblies working for a better future. And the IWW was a singing union.
Hill’s songs became wildly popular with fellow Wobblies, and many were
printed in the various editions of the IWW’s The Little Red Song Book.
As a result, Hill became not only a leader, but an icon of the Wobblies.
So when Hill suffered a gunshot wound on the same January 1914
night as a brutal double murder in a Salt Lake City grocery store, the
Utah legal and political establishment saw its chance to connect the
widely-spaced dots with flimsy circumstantial evidence and take out a
leader of the hated IWW. Hill always maintained his innocence and
claimed that he had received his wound from another man after they
argued over a woman. He steadfastly refused to name the other man or
the woman, insisting instead that he was innocent until proven guilty,
and that the state couldn’t prove his guilt since he had not committed
the double murder.
Adler presents compelling evidence, including a never-before-pub-lished
letter from Hilda Erickson (the woman involved) written thirty-five
years later explaining that Hill’s friend and Erickson’s former fiancé,
Otto Appelquist, had shot Hill “in a fit of anger” after Erickson had
broken off her engagement to Appelquist, presumably due to Hill’s
affection for Erickson. Appelquist had skipped town shortly after the
shooting, but Hilda Erickson remained a steadfast visitor of Hill in prison
and an observer of all his legal proceedings. Why she never came forward
publicly to clear Hill remains a mystery that Adler could not solve,
though he speculates that Hill may have asked her not to speak publicly.
Adler maintains that Hill’s refusal to name these names, and his initial
naïveté about the rigged Utah legal system, led to his conviction and
execution.
During the course of Hill’s legal trials and appeals, Adler believes
that Hill became convinced that his value to the IWW and the labor
movement would be greater as a state-murdered martyr than as a lesser
98
(though living) man who begged for mercy or implicated his two friends.
Recognizing his own symbolic value, one of Hill’s final wires to the IWW
before his execution contained his immortal exhortation: “Don’t waste
any time in mourning—organize.”
Perhaps Joe Hill had correctly foreseen his heightened value as a
martyr. His influence as a symbol for the IWW and organized labor
outlived his own life. He remains today, a century after his death, an
influence on both organized labor and American folk music, with the
iconic “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night” song still being recorded and
played today. William Adler’s The Man Who Never Died shines new and
fascinating light on this Swedish-American and labor icon.
ENDNOTES
1. About the author of this book, see http://themanwhonever
died.com/author/. His two previous books are Land of Opportunity: One Family’s
Quest for the American Dream in the Age of Crack (1995) and Mollie's Job: A Story
of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line (2001).
2. About the IWW, see: http://www.iww.org/about and http://en.wiki
pedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World.
KEVIN PROESCHOLDT
ASSOCIATE AND BOOK REVIEW EDITOR
Setterdahl, Lilly. Chicago Swedes: They Spoke from the Heart. East Moline,
IL, 2010. Soft cover, 234 pages. Index, illustrated. ISBN 978-1-4276-
4657-6.
The volume Chicago Swedes: They Spoke From the Heart comes as a
welcome finding aid to a very important segment of the oral histories
collected by Lennart Setterdahl, the author’s late husband. When
Setterdahl died in 1995 he had amassed, over a thirty-year period, 2,800
tape-recorded interviews with Swedish immigrants and their descendants
across North America. Researchers are meant to use this book as an
access point to the 340 Chicago oral history recordings, most of which
are available for study at the Vasa National Archives in Bishop Hill,
Illinois, and the Swedish Emigrant Institute in Växjö, Sweden. [The
Emigrant Institute may no longer be available as a source for these
records.—Ed.] Lilly Setterdahl supplies a very useful introduction, giving

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All rights held by the Swedish-American Historical Society. No part of this publication, except in the case of brief quotations, may be reproduced in any manner without the written permission of the editor and, where appropriate, the original author(s).

95
News and Notes
The brief piece on the Sandburg Medal, and the awarding of that
medal to Glen Brolander, in the January 2014 issue of this quarterly may
have left some readers wondering. First, the first person “I” who appears
in the second paragraph is longtime Society member and leader Eric
Lund. Second, the award was given to Glen Brolander at a celebratory
dinner gathering that included the Brolander family and friends, as well
as Society officers, at the Boutwells Landing Senior Living Center in
Oak Park Heights, Minnesota, on 15 September 2013.
Adding to their publication of new editions of Vilhelm Moberg’s
emigration novels, the Minnesota Historical Society Press has just
published two more books by the Swedish author: The Brides of Midsum-mer,
translated by Gudrun Brunot (St. Paul, MN: MHS Press, 2014;
ISBN 978-0-87351-920-5), available in paperbound and e-book editions;
originally published as Brudarnas källa: En legend om de bofasta in 1946
by Albert Bonniers (Stockholm). When I Was a Child: An Autobiographical
Novel, translated and abridged by Gustaf Lannestock (St. Paul, MN:
MHS Press, 2014; ISBN 978-0-87351-925-0), available in paperbound
and e-book editions; originally published as Soldat med brutet gevär by
Albert Bonniers (Stockholm) in 1944. Lannestock’s abridgement and
translation was first published by Alfred A. Knopf in 1956.
96
Book Reviews
Adler, William M.1 The Man Who Never Died: The Life, Times, and Legacy
of Joe Hill, American Labor Icon. New York: Bloomsbury USA, 2011.
Paper, 435 pp. Footnotes, bibliography, index, illustrations. ISBN
9781608194605.
The Swedish immigrant Joe Hill has occupied a prominent place in
Swedish-American lore since the state of Utah executed him in 1915,
allegedly for a double murder. He always maintained his innocence, and
this new full-length biography of Joe Hill by William Adler presents
convincing new evidence of that innocence. In fact, Hill seems to have
been prosecuted primarily because he was a high-profile songwriter and
leader of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), or “Wobblies,”
an early twentieth-century radical labor union movement.2
Joe Hill was born as Joel Hägglund in 1879 in Gävle, Sweden, into
a musical family. His father died when Joel was only eight, however,
leaving the family in financial straits. The Hägglund family church,
Bethlehem Chapel, was an important center of Sweden’s religious revival
and free church movement. Its pastor, Rev. Paul Peter Waldenström,
was a powerful preacher and theologian at the height of his influence
during Joel Hägglund’s boyhood. Among other things, Waldenström
preached Christ’s mission to seek social justice and to “release the
oppressed,” a message that the adult Joe Hill seemed to follow.
After his mother died in 1902, Joel and an older brother emigrated
to America. In America he changed and shortened his name from Joel
Hägglund to Joe Hillström to Joe Hill.
Adler’s new biography delves into the history of the IWW, the
challenges faced by unskilled labor (much of it from immigrants,
including many Swedes), especially in the western United States, and
the differences between the Wobblies and the much more conservative,
Samuel Gompers-led American Federation of Labor. The business,
political, and media establishment despised the IWW for its use of strikes
and work stoppages, its socialistic rhetoric about workers taking over the
capitalistic system, and its basic challenges to unfettered big business.
Cities in the West passed ordinances to try to prevent the Wobblies
from organizing workers and exercising free speech. This resulted in
97
IWW-led “free speech” campaigns in places like Spokane and Fresno,
where Wobblies would converge on the city, get arrested for exercising
free speech on street corners, and overwhelm the city’s jail and court
systems until the cities cried “uncle.” Joe Hill participated in the
successful free speech campaigns in these two cities.
Where Joe Hill found his true calling, however, was in writing songs
for the movement. He wrote dozens of songs—in English, usually to
well-known tunes, often humorous, sometimes caustic, and in parody—
that struck at the oppressors of the working class and gave hope to the
Wobblies working for a better future. And the IWW was a singing union.
Hill’s songs became wildly popular with fellow Wobblies, and many were
printed in the various editions of the IWW’s The Little Red Song Book.
As a result, Hill became not only a leader, but an icon of the Wobblies.
So when Hill suffered a gunshot wound on the same January 1914
night as a brutal double murder in a Salt Lake City grocery store, the
Utah legal and political establishment saw its chance to connect the
widely-spaced dots with flimsy circumstantial evidence and take out a
leader of the hated IWW. Hill always maintained his innocence and
claimed that he had received his wound from another man after they
argued over a woman. He steadfastly refused to name the other man or
the woman, insisting instead that he was innocent until proven guilty,
and that the state couldn’t prove his guilt since he had not committed
the double murder.
Adler presents compelling evidence, including a never-before-pub-lished
letter from Hilda Erickson (the woman involved) written thirty-five
years later explaining that Hill’s friend and Erickson’s former fiancé,
Otto Appelquist, had shot Hill “in a fit of anger” after Erickson had
broken off her engagement to Appelquist, presumably due to Hill’s
affection for Erickson. Appelquist had skipped town shortly after the
shooting, but Hilda Erickson remained a steadfast visitor of Hill in prison
and an observer of all his legal proceedings. Why she never came forward
publicly to clear Hill remains a mystery that Adler could not solve,
though he speculates that Hill may have asked her not to speak publicly.
Adler maintains that Hill’s refusal to name these names, and his initial
naïveté about the rigged Utah legal system, led to his conviction and
execution.
During the course of Hill’s legal trials and appeals, Adler believes
that Hill became convinced that his value to the IWW and the labor
movement would be greater as a state-murdered martyr than as a lesser
98
(though living) man who begged for mercy or implicated his two friends.
Recognizing his own symbolic value, one of Hill’s final wires to the IWW
before his execution contained his immortal exhortation: “Don’t waste
any time in mourning—organize.”
Perhaps Joe Hill had correctly foreseen his heightened value as a
martyr. His influence as a symbol for the IWW and organized labor
outlived his own life. He remains today, a century after his death, an
influence on both organized labor and American folk music, with the
iconic “I dreamed I saw Joe Hill last night” song still being recorded and
played today. William Adler’s The Man Who Never Died shines new and
fascinating light on this Swedish-American and labor icon.
ENDNOTES
1. About the author of this book, see http://themanwhonever
died.com/author/. His two previous books are Land of Opportunity: One Family’s
Quest for the American Dream in the Age of Crack (1995) and Mollie's Job: A Story
of Life and Work on the Global Assembly Line (2001).
2. About the IWW, see: http://www.iww.org/about and http://en.wiki
pedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Workers_of_the_World.
KEVIN PROESCHOLDT
ASSOCIATE AND BOOK REVIEW EDITOR
Setterdahl, Lilly. Chicago Swedes: They Spoke from the Heart. East Moline,
IL, 2010. Soft cover, 234 pages. Index, illustrated. ISBN 978-1-4276-
4657-6.
The volume Chicago Swedes: They Spoke From the Heart comes as a
welcome finding aid to a very important segment of the oral histories
collected by Lennart Setterdahl, the author’s late husband. When
Setterdahl died in 1995 he had amassed, over a thirty-year period, 2,800
tape-recorded interviews with Swedish immigrants and their descendants
across North America. Researchers are meant to use this book as an
access point to the 340 Chicago oral history recordings, most of which
are available for study at the Vasa National Archives in Bishop Hill,
Illinois, and the Swedish Emigrant Institute in Växjö, Sweden. [The
Emigrant Institute may no longer be available as a source for these
records.—Ed.] Lilly Setterdahl supplies a very useful introduction, giving